weezer[1] is bad[2] because[3] matt sharp[4] left[5]
see below for footnotes
1 weezer as of right now consists of 3 musicians who come into the studio and play the track theyre told to play and sing the backing vocals theyve been assigned and then rivers cuomo who does literally absolutely everything else. there are good musicians in weezer, rivers being one of them, but the only one who actually is contributing to the sound of weezer is mostly rivers. if pat took hold itd be quite a different band but, crucially, not as popular, so it is integral to wezer's survival rivers remains in charge and makes all the decisions. <- so probably goes the cult chant because weezer is kind of a cult
2 is weezer bad? has weezer always been bad? they created two classic touchstones of the 90s alt rock moment and those albums still hold up to this day. as recently as 2021 weezer has released genuinely well-put together albums like ok human and white album. see 4 for more information, because these albums were also put together without matt (although in some cases like white album and maladroit there was also a lot of input from other people like jake sinclair or the weezer fan populace). of course weezer has released bad music but theyve done a lot of impressive things and theyre somehow still popular enough to fill stadiums, so theyre doing something right
3 BECAUSE matt left is crucial here. not because matt wasnt there, because rivers is a very good songwriter who probably wouldve made it in some degree even without matts help, but because matt LEFT weezer for his own band was probably seen as a betrayal based on rivers' attitudes towards side projects in the late 90s/early 2000s. when matt left he freaked the fuck out and sold his soul to the category o' riffs binder, intent on making as much money as fucking possible with his perfect song formula. matt left, and because he chose to leave rivers (+ rivers' perception of how the public thought of pinkerton), rivers completely changed his attitude towards the band, songwriting, managing, basically everything
4 matt was part of the original weezer sound. but like so was jason cropper. can i talk about this okay jason cropper had to be a big influence on blue's sound because the acoustic guitar touches on that album are NOT present basically at all in the weezer catalogue, or at least not in the same style. that became part of what "classic weezer" sounded like to fans who only had that album til pinkerton, when jason wasnt there and the band as a whole had much less input because rivers already had it fixed and arranged. and people didnt like pinkertons sound!!!! (as rivers sees it because he pivoted away from the pinkerton sound, but not BACK to the blue sound) so if you think about it weezer got bad when jason cropper left too
5 did he leave?? DID HE FUCKING LEAVE? because as it sounds like in rivers' edge, he just moped around and refused to commit to anything (because matt sharp has a terminal fear of commitment) and everyone else got so annoyed with him because he wasnt shaping up to record the next album that they just fired him to get it over with, but it didnt matter, because he was basically quiet quitting anyway. and that Is what matt wanted until the rentals flopped and then when he wanted back into weezer HE SUED THEM. and started telling people (as late as 2006! the year of rivers' wedding that matt attended and then rerecorded a song he'd written about rivers from 1995) he got fired from the band while weezer has stuck with the fact that he quit, and i think matt has basically dropped it at this point, but still, DID HE LEAVE OR WAS HE FIRED
